Summary

• Aaron Cross was a more morally ambiguous and amoral antihero compared to Jason Bourne, making him a suitable successor.
• Cross had a less tragic backstory, resulting in a lighter tone and less personal motivation for revenge against the CIA.
• The enemies Cross faced in The Bourne Legacy were more dangerous, raising the stakes and making the story more thrilling.

While the original Bourne trilogy included the strongest movies in the Jason Bourne franchise, The Bourne Legacy’s Aaron Cross was arguably a better action protagonist than his predecessor. The Bourne movies started out bleak, and they only grew darker as the original trilogy continued. In The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne was an amnesic super-spy who woke up with no recollection of his past and a shadowy group of assassins out to kill him. As the trilogy progressed, Bourne discovered he was part of an elite group of hit men trained by the CIA in a secret program called Operation Blackbriar.

If that wasn't bad enough, Jason Bourne’s dark origin story eventually revealed that he signed up for Operation Blackbriar because the CIA promised they would let him hunt down the terrorists who killed his father. The nightmarish problem was that it was really the CIA who killed Bourne’s father, with the deceitful organization staging his death to blame it on terrorists. To make matters worse, Bourne’s father helped develop Operation Blackbriar before his murder. Luckily, Bourne did at least manage to expose the CIA’s crimes at the end of the original trilogy. Thus, when 2012’s The Bourne Legacy began, the series needed an even more morally ambiguous antihero.

7 Aaron Cross Was More Morally Ambiguous Than Jason Bourne

The Bourne Legacy’s leading man, Aaron Cross (played by Jeremy Renner), was a perfect follow-up to Jason Bourne, as he was more sympathetic than his predecessor from the outset. While Treadstone’s terrible retcon made the CIA seem comparatively harmless, The Bourne Legacy made the organization even more dangerous than they were in the original trilogy. This meant that the series needed an even tougher, more amoral leading man to defeat them. Aaron Cross’s considerable mean streak was best epitomized when he brutally beat up the guards at a Manila facility and stole the plant manager’s watch after knocking him out.

6 Aaron Cross’s Motivations Were Less Tragic

Cross was tougher than Bourne, but he also had a less tragic backstory. This made his revenge against the CIA less personally motivated and more instinctual, which rendered the tone of the reboot a little lighter as a result. The Bourne Legacy depicted a more ruthless version of the CIA, so the sequel needed a less poignant backstory for its hero. Jason Bourne ed Operation Blackbriar because his father was killed by terrorists (or so he thought), whereas Cross ed because his extensive injuries made him seek out psychical restoration and enhancement. As such, he was always more savvy than his predecessor and more aware of the CIA’s shady antics.

5 Aaron Cross’s Enemies Were More Dangerous

Jason Bourne went into hiding after the original trilogy ended, but Cross didn’t have such an easy time evading the CIA and their rogue operatives. The reboot’s version of the villainous organization killed a lot of their own assassins, operated a level above the original trilogy’s villains, and wasn't even exposed in The Bourne Legacy’s grim ending. Cross was lucky to escape the movie with his life, whereas Jason Bourne managed to shed light on many of the CIA’s crimes. Although this made The Bourne Legacy darker, the more formidable villains also made the movie’s story more thrilling and heightened its stakes.

4 Aaron Cross Was Genetically Enhanced Unlike Jason Bourne

Bourne was trained to be a lethal super-spy, but he didn’t have Aaron Cross’s biggest advantage. A battery of drugs and viral injections enhanced Cross’s brain and body to make him more efficiently lethal in a rare Bourne twist that bordered on sci-fi territory. Since only the worst James Bond movies added sci-fi elements to the spy movie formula, viewers might have expected this far-fetched twist to feel too outlandish for The Bourne Legacy. However, the fact that the CIA experimented with pharmaceutically enhancing soldiers in reality made this revelation believable and surprising at the same time.

3 Aaron Cross Had None of Jason Bourne’s Weaknesses

Since he successfully got Marta to make his genetic alternations permanent in The Bourne Legacy’s Manila-set climax, Cross was effectively free from the problems that plagued Jason Bourne. He already shed the conscience that plagued Bourne throughout the original trilogy, with Cross barely flinching after wiping out enemies, even though Bourne was known to shed a regretful tear over his killings. However, with his genetic alternations made permanent, Cross was closer to James Bond than Jason Bourne as he became a full-blown super-spy with enhanced senses and healing abilities, as well as incredible agility and dexterity.

2 Aaron Cross Could Handle Hazardous Terrain Better Than Bourne

Jason Bourne was great at car chases through Paris and foot chases through Tangiers. However, the antihero didn’t do much in the way of surviving the wilderness, as the events of the Bourne trilogy rarely took him far from civilization. When he did go into hiding, Bourne was still close to a human population thanks to his work as a bare-knuckle boxer. In contrast, Cross could survive in the freezing wilderness while pursued by a pack of wolves. This meant that The Bourne Legacy’s ending set up sequels that could have stranded their hero in the desert, the jungle, or an uncharted island, while Bourne couldn’t handle this terrain.

1 Aaron Cross’s Story Offered The Bourne Series More Freedom

The Bourne Legacy made Aaron Cross more than human while still holding onto the relative realism that made the series stand out. In a multiplex full of superheroes, Bourne was a rare hero who bled, cried, and often almost died. However, Cross’s enhanced abilities allowed him to keep the spy’s humanity while expanding the kinds of stories the series could tell. It meant dropping the grounded, gritty style of the franchise, but his biological enhancements enabled the Bourne series to incorporate more sci-fi-adjacent elements.

Since Cross was already a biologically enhanced super-solider, he could have taken the Bourne franchise’s stories into wilder places without sacrificing their believability. The Daniel Craig James Bond movies included nanobots and wristwatch bombs, but they were still critically beloved thanks to their stern, taciturn antihero playing the story straight. Aaron Cross could have done just this for the series, whereas Bourne was always going to be limited by his humanity. Since Jason Bourne was ultimately a well-trained hit man, he couldn’t take the Bourne series to the same wild places as Aaron Cross due to the biological advancements that the antihero gained in The Bourne Legacy.